Corey Katz / Kate Beaton
For those who have paid attention to the webcomics scene of the 2010s or just like good humor, the name Kate Beaton is probably a household name. The Canadian cartoonist Listen to a drifter— a dizzying mix of literary and historical references, disrespect for institutions that deserved none, and merry silliness that ran until 2018 — was a staple of Best Of lists for many years, both online and in the two print collections.
In addition to that work, Beaton has made children’s books (The princess and the pony and King Babywho won both awards) and an animated series based on one of those books earlier this year: Pine cone & pony on Apple TV+.
This week, her latest project hits the shelves, and it might just be her biggest achievement to date. Ducks: two years in the oil sands is a memoir of her experiences working in the oil sands of Athabasca in northern Alberta. It’s a serious, moving and heartfelt piece of cartoon that is as friendly as it is fearless and easily one of the most impressive graphic novels of this year, or works of any kind in the past decade.
WIRED caught up with the author via email to ask about her memoir, The End of Listen to a drifterand educating readers about life in Canada’s oil sands.
WIRED: ducks is downright devastating. As a reader, it feels like it’s something you’ve been working towards for a while. I know you published an early and significantly different version of this as a webcomic in 2014. One of the things both versions have in common is a sense of, perhaps, emotional disconnection, a sense of being so overwhelmed that it was almost impossible to share what it actually was like. How did you overcome that to make this book?
Kate Beaton: hmm. Not sure if I agree with the question. I don’t think I have an emotional disconnect or ambivalence. If anything, too much of the opposite.
It’s my deep connection and deep concern that make it a difficult and impossible story to tell – as soon as I describe one thing, I feel bad for not describing three others to make sure I’m giving the full picture because there is not a single detail that makes you understand what I want to show you; the contradictions are endless, the complexity enormous.
When I started talking to someone about the oil sands, I couldn’t stop because there wasn’t a moment when I could be satisfied that I had explained it. I needed editors to make this book so it wouldn’t be 2000 pages – and it’s still 500 pages, and all kinds of things are missing. But that’s probably for the best. It must be a readable book.
How long was this in the making? You said when you stopped Listen to a drifter long time since you worked on a graphic novel in 2018. Was that ducks?
The book had been in the making since 2016, I pitched it in the summer of 2016 for Drawn and Quarterly.
It took me a year to write it. It took me several years to draw it. In between there were a few stops and starts. I had two children and I lost my sister Becky to cancer. Becky is in the book. There were long periods of time when I didn’t work on it, but it was always on my mind. I’m sure it was helpful, but it’s also just the way it was.
Compared to 2014, does now feel like the right time to tell this story? Or maybe you can handle it better now?
In 2014 I was just in my studio and one day I had to start drawing those comics. I called them a “test” later on, but at the time it was just something I was driven to do for their own good, and as I did it, you could see the bigger picture emerge of what it could be . I think I always thought this was a book I’d make, but that really made it clear that I could do it.
But I couldn’t do it right then. I had a picture book I was working on; I couldn’t contain the departure Listen to a drifter immediately. But I started to look into it. I mean – I started the book in 2016, not too long after that, so it’s not really a 2014 vs 2022 issue, it just took that long to make the book.
One of the things that sticks with me about it is how nice it is. I feel like you go to great lengths to emphasize that the experience of working in the oil sands dehumanizes everyone to some degree, no matter how they think they react to it. Was that an attitude you’ve always had in this context, or did it come when you looked back at everything?
I’ve always had it. I didn’t come back to think and found that everyone was only human after all, haha. I lived with these people, they were my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors. And even when things are bleak, I can see what I’m looking at. Even when it hurts.
Of course, I’ve also had many years to think about it and get older myself, and I’m sure that gradually made a difference – hopefully the slow onset of wisdom. But you care about the people around you, don’t you?
Maybe I’m betraying my own short-sightedness, but I had no idea what the oil sands were, or what it was like to work there. In that respect, the book feels very educational.
I know many readers will not know much about the oil sands. If you’re not connected to it, you might just feel like it’s a place that’s, you know, big and heavy and full of dump trucks and environmental issues and money.
Luckily for those readers, I didn’t know much about it myself when I got there, and everything in the book is from my point of view, and the reader is put in those shoes to learn as I learn what they’re looking at. So in that sense a gradual education by design and natural works, as it did for me.
Are you nervous about what the public will think of the book? It uses all the tools you have developed during Listen to a drifterbut with a very different direction and ambition than that project, which was essentially a humorous comic.
I’m not nervous about what the audience is used to Listen to a drifter will make of it. I think anyone who has been following me and my work for a while will have an idea of who I am and where I’m going and what I have to say, even though this is a completely different book.
I’m more nervous about doing a book on what people here in Canada see as a very polarizing topic. I’m not sure what will come with that. But all I could do was tell things honestly.
How is it making? ducks influenced what you do to get ahead? I would like to If I can’t have my own on your Patreon shows a similar tone, as well as a similar sense of pacing, for example.
Well, that’s a story I’ve probably had in my head for ten years, so I don’t know about that. It’s loosely based on an anecdote my father told me a long time ago that I was thinking about and spinning.
I think it’s more likely that I had these things in me, but I kept making Listen to a drifter maybe longer than I should have – or shouldn’t have, but something like that. I have no regrets. We all need to grow and change. Losing my sister like we did, as horrible as it was, I lost all will to write jokes for a living for a long time. Although now I’m done ducksmaybe that will come back.
Which leads to my final question: how does it feel to finish the book? I have such a feeling that it’s an intense, personal experience that I wonder if it’s a relief to be able to share it.
Well, I’ll answer this before the book is fully in the world, so it’s hard for me to say. It’s still in that in-between period where not many people have read it. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I hope it will be good. I hope I did well.
This story originally appeared on wired.com.
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